1. Technical Field
The presently disclosed subject matter relates to a vehicle light such as a vehicle headlight, an auxiliary headlight, a rear combination lamp, and the like, having an outer lens. The presently disclosed subject matter also relates to a method for manufacturing the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a conventional vehicle light including an outer lens, moisture may enter the inside of the light during use. The moisture that enters can adhere to the inner surface of the outer lens resulting in mist on the lens. In order to prevent this, the inner surface of the outer lens may include an anti-fog coating applied thereto.
In this case, such an anti-fog coating should be transparent. Accordingly, when a completed product including the outer lens is observed, it is difficult to determine whether such a transparent anti-fog coating has been applied or not.
In order to determine whether this anti-fog coating has been applied, conventional techniques include providing a boundary line near a coating mask formed on an outer lens at an unnoticeable position. After removing the coating mask, one can determine whether the transparent anti-fog coating has been applied or not by visually inspecting and determining the presence or absence of the boundary line on the outer lens.
However, it is not easy to determine whether the anti-fog coating has been applied by visual inspection of such a boundary line. Furthermore, there is no other fallback determination method. If a partially finished product that does not include the anti-fog coating comes to be mixed into the final assembly process of the vehicle lamp after the anti-fog coating process, the resulting finished products contain defective uncoated products which cannot be clearly distinguished from the nondefective coated products.
The determination of whether a coating has been applied or not is also used for other transparent coatings for surface treatment, such as a hard coating for an outer surface of an outer lens. If the determination has not been carried out, an uncoated product may be mixed into a group of coated products.